Ignore my morning hair / hat head chic and the chaos in the kitchen. I want to tell you that I conquered my Everest today. The brisket was immaculate, flavorful, incredibly tender, Smokey, well-seasoned, and delicious. The marg was oranges and limes, citronge and tequila.
My dinner guests bailed on me today so I’m looking for a home for 7 remaining pounds of brisket. We’ll eat on it for a few days… I’ll give some to David’s mother, and maybe to my no-show guests so they can have it for dinner tomorrow.
Anyway this was good. Some notes:
I cooked an 8 pound trimmed up brisket flat, not a whole packer
I made an aluminum foil tub and cheated to keep it from drying out, which flats have a tendency to do.
I did pour off the liquid around 165-170 degrees so that I had smoked brisket and not braised brisket
My oven doesn’t go down to 150–it only goes to 175 so I held it at 175 after cooking for a couple hours and then wrapped it in an ice chest to let it finish resting a few more hours. The brisket was plenty warm when I sliced it / made sandwiches.
Mine was simple—sliced brisket, Franklin’s spicy bbq sauce (they do not know the definition of the term “spicy” but it’s a decent counterpoint to the rub I used. And pickles. Crunchy, acidic counterpoint to the Smokey meat, salty bark and sweet sauce.
Speaking of the rub, after my previous post about rubbing my meat right before I cook it—I did say I do day ahead if I’m able and in today’s case I rubbed it and wrapped it a day ahead.
Poking the Texas BBQ gods in the eye, not only did I not use Mesquite, but I also didn’t use post oak (which most of the bbq places in Austin use)—I used hickory. It’s great. Come at me. Hickory just burns cleanly and easily for me, I like it, and the results speak for themselves.
